


The Nine Lives of Edward Kaspbrak

by whateverhappensnext



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Eddie Kaspbrak-centric, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-10-18 20:45:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20645423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whateverhappensnext/pseuds/whateverhappensnext
Summary: When It crash-landed on earth, It released a piece of magic. Eddie Kaspbrak dies, dies, and dies again, but somehow makes it out okay. Magical realism fix-it.





	1. Chapter 1

It was the first of its kind to reach Earth. Others had missed, just grazing the planet, hurtling onwards into the cosmic abyss. But It was lucky--doubly so--for if It had arrived a moment too soon, It would have plunged deep into the prehistoric ocean, crash-landing in a feral, frozen world of extremophiles. Instead, It arrived just in time, skidding into a sleepy, Jurassic forest that would one day become a little town by the name of Derry, Maine.

At the infinitesimal second of impact, It felt an unbearable pain, as if something had shot right through its very core. It thought it knew everything, but it didn’t know this: that if It intended to feed off the earth, the earth would feed off It too.

Pickings were slim at first. The lumbering, titanic sauropods provided little of what It craved, which was sustenance of the psyche. Brachiosaurus loomed as large as mountains, but their souls were the size of walnuts. It was starving. But then, It watched from above as a new beast appeared in their midst, a clawed menace who suddenly tore through the neck of a young one and scattered the rest through the valley. And, oh, what filled the air was absolutely tantalizing. Fear. It followed the Tyrannosaurus rex like a diner trailing the maitre d. Delicious. 

It soon found that it could create fear itself. It was easy, too easy to frighten these lower dimensional land dwellers. And it needn’t stray far, as every nook and cranny was filled with them. Life. When the dinosaurs withered away, It preyed on the mammals that took their place. Life went on, and so did It.

As millions of years passed, It remained unaware that when it had barreled into primordial New England, the impact had splintered away a vital bit of its power, a magic that It didn’t even know it had. As It drank from all creatures, big and small, the magic grew stronger, until one day it bestowed itself upon one worthy being.

The humans revered the wolves. Not simply because they were beautiful, fearsome beasts, but because there was one gray wolf in particular, marked by a white diamond of fur on his back. The wise one said that Diamondback had been speared, right through the heart, eight times, and that after the eighth time he rose on his haunches and howled at the hunters, who withered where they stood. Since then, no flint arrow could pierce its hide. The humans thought Diamondback was the invincible incarnation of the protector god, to remind them not to take so much from the earth. They were only partly wrong. The wolf was invincible to all the arrows and injuries of mankind, but not to time. When the wolf passed away from old age, it seemed to the natives that the magic did too. A new breed of man had arrived on the shores, with arrows faster than lightning and hide tougher than wolfskin. They pounced on the natives much as the Tyrannosaurus did upon the sauropods millions of years ago, leaving a trail of anguish in their wake. It was thriving.

In truth, It could dine on love, devotion, and happiness as well, but they were so much more difficult to create. Fear though, fear was simple, especially in Derry where terror seemed to grow on trees. After scaring up a feast (children were laughably easy to procure, and tender too), It would recoil back to its higher dimension for the night, which amounted to 27 years. Centuries passed this way after the death of Diamondback, until the magic reemerged.

Eddie Kaspbrak was born in November 1979, and his father died four years later. He didn’t remember much of his father, except that he loved to be outdoors, wandering the New England woods. His mother, practically bed bound with grief, hardly noticed when one April afternoon, little Eddie took off for the forest alone with an E.T. lunch tin and a butterfly net. Stumbling over moss-covered tree roots, he gravitated towards a particularly inviting sliver of sunlight. Disappointingly, he couldn’t find any butterflies, but he did see a patch of spindly blue protea flowers. He knelt down beside them. “I wish I had a camera,” he whispered conspiratorially. “You’re so pretty.” The flowers seemed to twinkle in reply. Eddie settled onto a nearby rock, took a granola bar and Batman #357 out, and started to flip through the pages. He had never been that interested in butterflies anyway. 

Eddie must have dozed off, because before he knew it he was blearily rubbing his eyes, trying to figure out if he was hallucinating an honest-to-god wolf in the clearing. The wolf, apparently uninterested in his presence, headed straight for the blue flowers. “No!” Eddie squealed. “Bad dog!” The wolf turned to him, catching a whiff of magic, and lunged.

This time, Eddie woke up to harsh fluorescent lights. 

“He’s awake!” echoed a figure in white, looming overhead. His head was pounding. “Whew, kiddo, you really scared us there.” The light was blinding. Eddie tried to cover his eyes, but he couldn’t move his arms.

When he woke again, it was evening. He was in the hospital. “Mommy?” he croaked.

His mother was sleeping in the bedside recliner, much as she did at home. She had been mortified when the police had found Eddie bleeding in the woods, mauled by a wolf no less. She thought they might call child protective services. But then, in the hospital, the doctors and nurses were so kind, taking care of her little boy. They listened to her sob uncontrollably and nodded sympathetically, just like they did when Eddie’s father had been sick--only this time, Eddie got better. It was because of her, they said. She helped her little boy get better. She was the only one who could protect him.

It was Eddie Kaspbrak’s first death, and it wouldn’t be his last. 


	2. Chapter 2

Sonia Kaspbrak barely let Eddie out of the house after his first death, but she couldn’t keep him out of school. 

Eddie was one of twenty children in Mrs. Kreitman’s first grade class. It was the second week of school, and Eddie was at his usual empty table, concentrating on shaping blue flowers with crayon and glitter glue, when a rather loud voice interrupted him. 

“Whatcha drawing?” a buck-toothed boy with thick, Coke-bottle glasses drawled.

“Flowers,” Eddie said, smoothing out the edges of his masterpiece, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world..

The other boy peered at the paper with an exaggerated squint. “Looks like poop on a stick to me,” he said, his southern accent even thicker.

Eddie huffed. For one second the bespectacled boy had a terrifying thought, that he had read Eddie wrong and the artist might burst into tears. But instead, Eddie snorted out, “S’gross,” sticking his little pink tongue out. 

“I’m Richie,” the other boy said. “Richie Tozier.” He held his hand out, because that’s what his father had told him to do when meeting new friends.

Eddie ignored him in favor of scribbling furiously with his crayons. “Done,” he chirped.

“Well, don’t leave me hanging,” Richie said, his hand still in mid air.

“Like you said, poop on a stick,” Eddie said, placing the paper in Richie’s hand. Eddie had covered the blue with brown, and added an arrow that said, in neat letters, RICHIE TOSER.

“Hah!” Richie guffawed, which sounded like a foghorn. “Eds gets off a good one!”

“It’s Eddie, not Eds,” he corrected, with a poorly hidden smile.

At home that afternoon, Maggie Tozier, opened Richie’s backpack to find: a pile of crushed goldfish crackers, a math activity book that looked like it’d never been opened, and one folder with a drawing of … she wasn’t sure if it was a corn dog or a celery stick, and she’d have to gently remind Richie how to spell their last name, but it was his. She stuck it on the refrigerator.

“Eddie drew that,” Richie said, sliding into the kitchen with a popsicle in hand.

“Eddie?” Maggie queried.

“He’s in my class, Eddie Kaspbrak. He drew it for me,” Richie said proudly.

“Oh that’s nice, dear,” Maggie said. It must be Frank Kaspbrak’s son. She remembered him from high school, a kind but skittish boy who always looked like a deer in headlights.

“Mom, can I be Han Solo for Halloween?”

“Sure, sweetie. I thought you wanted to be Superman, though?”

“Yeah, but now I want to be Han Solo,” Richie said, pressing a paper into her hand. “Like that.”

Maggie looked at the crayon scribble of a large black rectangle. Well, Wentworth did have an old black vest that she could probably repurpose. She shook her head.  _ Boys. _

Autumn hit Derry harder than others. By mid October, Sonia Kaspbrak was already insisting that Eddie wear his two-sizes-too-big hunter green puffer jacket to school, which made him look like a rather disgruntled turtle. Still, to her outward dismay and inward delight, it didn’t stop Eddie from catching a cold at the end of the month.

“Richie and Bill and Stan said they’re going trick-or-treating,” Eddie snuffled, nose bright red.

“Well, you aren’t gonig anywhere, sweetie, you’re still sick,” Sonia said, fussing over his makeshift hospital bed on the couch. She measured out a teaspoon of Robutussin. “Now, take this.”

“I’m not sick,” Eddie hiccuped. “I’m getting better.” Allergy pills and inhalers he could do, but cherry-flavored cough medicine he hated with a vengeance.

“There you go, coughing up a lung,” Sonia tsked. She guided the spoon towards Eddie’s obstinate mouth. “Take it, Eddie bear,” she said warningly.

_ Ding _ . Sonia ignored the doorbell. She had turned the porchlights off, for god’s sake. “Open your mouth, sweetie,” she said, gritting her teeth.  _ Ding ding ding ding.  _ Jesus, it must be one of the neighborhood hooligans, Belch Higgins or somesuch. She jammed the cough syrup down Eddie’s throat, which he protested with a gag, and lumbered towards the door.  _ Ding ding _ . Strange, she couldn’t see anyone through the peephole. Slowly, she undid the latch, unbolted the masterlock, and creaked the door open.

“Oh, thank god, Mrs. Kaspbrak!” a lanky boy with huge glasses dressed like a minimalist cowboy waved what she hoped was a plastic black gun around. “I’m Richie Tozier, and I just wanted to check on Eddie because he’s my friend and he wasn’t at school today and we wanted to go trick-or-treating and this is Bill and Stan,” he paused, pointing at a small superman and another boy wearing a three-piece business suit, “So is Eddie home?”

“Richie?” Eddie said from the couch, punctuated with a hacking cough.

“Well, now you’ve made him ill,” Sonia said, exasperated. She looked down at Richie, square in the eyes, which made him shrink a little. “He will most definitely not be going trick-or-treating tonight. Or any night,” she said, casting a glance back at her son, in case he tried anything. “Now run along.”

Richie Tozier, feeling a bit like a kicked puppy, scampered off the porch. He looked back at the window as if he might catch Eddie waving through the glass, only to see the blinds swish shut. “What a witch,” he grumbled to Bill.

“What a rude boy,” Sonia shook her head. Eddie coughed and sniffled feebly, which she mistook for agreement. She put a hand to Eddie’s forehead. “Oh, and now you’re burning up, Eddie bear.” Still distracted, she shuffled through the colony of pill bottles on the credenza, untwisting a child-proof cap and dispensing one small white aspirin into her large clammy palm. “Here, sweetie, take this, it’ll bring down that fever,” she said, thrusting it into Eddie’s face. Eddie, having just aspirated on cough syrup, was in no condition to refuse. 

If this had happened three years later, and if Sonia Kaspbrak ever read the labels on pill bottles, she would have seen a “do not give to children under 18” in bold print. But to Sonia, all pills were good, even the ones that contained nothing more than sugar, treating nothing more than her own neuroses.

True to her word, Eddie did not go trick-or-treating that night, nor was he in any shape to do more than blearily open his eyes, turn, and dry heave any other night for the rest of the week. Finally, Sonia brought him to Derry General Hospital, back to the familiar bright lights. “I don’t know what happened to him!” she cried. “He was just getting over the flu, but then he got so worked up because he missed Halloween, and now he’s barely waking up.” 

Richie, horrified that he may have inadvertently killed Eddie by ringing his doorbell one too many times, insisted that his mother bring him to visit Eddie in the hospital. “Eds!” he whisper-shouted from the doorway. Eddie didn’t respond. “He’s going to be okay, right?” Richie said to his mother, eyes uncharacteristically watery. They weren’t allowed in the room, on account of the doctors having no idea what Eddie had, but they did permit Richie to leave a toy stuffed dog, which held a card reading “Heard you’re going through a ruff time, hope you get well soon!”

“Of course he will,” Maggie said, though a sideways glance at a grim-looking nurse meant that she wasn’t so sure. To everyone’s surprise, however, Eddie did get well soon. The very next day, in fact. His brief discharge note read as follows:

“6 yo M admitted for lethargy, vomiting, confusion possibly Tylenol overdose, encephalitis, or Reye syndrome. Blood, urine, respiratory cultures and lumbar puncture negative. Fluids, acetylcysteine, flu vaccine administered. Miraculous full recovery after 3 days of stupor.”

Eddie, at his own insistence, was back in school the following week. 

“Leggo, Rich, I can’t,” Eddie gasped, his head trapped in Richie’s vice-grip hug. “I can’t breath.”

“Sorry!” Richie relaxed his arms, horrified. 

“Kidding! I’m kidding!” Eddie said, his hair adorably disheveled.

Richie was so relieved he thought he might cry. 


End file.
